July, 2009

More Windows 7 News

In a recent post I mentioned that Windows 7 would be available, preloaded on new PCs in October. Today Microsoft sent out a much more detailed E-mail message disclosing the release dates. Here is when Windows 7 will be available through various channels:

Volume license customers with the software assurance plan: August 7th

TechNet subscribers: August 6th

Non English versions of Windows 7 should be available through these channels as of October 1st.

Adobe Security Vulnerability

This morning I read an article in USA Today that discussed a serious security vulnerability in Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Hackers have been setting up Web sites containing “corrupt” adobe files. When these files are loaded, they allow a bot to be installed onto the victim’s computer. As of right now no fixes are available, but Adobe is trying to produce a fix by Friday.

Internet Explorer File Downloads

Being that I write about a wide variety of technologies, I find myself constantly downloading files from TechNet and other sources. It isn’t often that I have to do bulk downloads, but when I do, I have always found it frustrating that Internet Explorer limits the number of simultanious downloads that you can perform.

In the past the solution to this problem was to modify the registry. By performing the following registry modifications, you can configure IE to allow up to ten simultaneous downloads:

Navigate through the Registry Editor to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

 Create a new DWORD named MaxConnectionsPerServer and assign it a value of 0000000a

 Create a new DWORD named MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and assign it a value of 0000000a

Keep in mind that editing the registry is dangerous, and that you can destroy Windows, Internet Explorer, or your other applications if you make a mistake. Therefore, you should create a full backup before you try that technique.

A better solution to the problem is to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8. Although I haven’t seen any official documentation, the simultaneous download limit seems to be gone. I decided to see how far I could push Internet Explorer this morning, and initiated 40 simultaneous downloads!

A Hyper-V Bug?

Lately, I have been really frustrated with what appears to be a bug in Hyper-V. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to find any references to it on the Internet, so I am beginning to wonder if this is really a bug, or if it is something related to my own unique environment.

What happens is that the registry routinely gets corrupted on virtual machines that are running Windows Server 2003 R2. I will be working on a VM with no signs of trouble, reboot the VM, and receive a message stating that the registry was corrupted. The crazy thing is that there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for the occurance. I have seen it happen to freshly installed copies of Windows as well as VMs that have been running for weeks. The interesting thing is that it is always the same registry key that becomes corrupted (HKLM\Software).

Over the last couple of months, this has started to become a major issue for me. I have lost dozens of hours of productivity to rebuilding lab VMs. I just wanted to put this out there and see if anyone else has experienced this problem.

The End of the GUI?

Back in the 80’s, Microsoft made their fortune by creating products that used a graphical user interface. Today though, there seems to be a reversal of that thought process. Windows Server 2008 offers a mode called Server Core that doesn’t even have a GUI, and more and more of the utilities that are provided on TechNet seem to be command line only. A friend in Redmond told me that Microsoft really expects all Windows administrators to know how to work with PowerShell, a command line environment that has started to show up in a lot of Microsoft server products.

So what does all this mean? I really don’t know. It’s just an observation. I don’t think that the GUI is going to completely go away any time soon, but it does strike me as odd just how much of a comeback the command line is making.

Windows 7 Release Date

It looks like Microsoft has finally made public their release date for Windows 7. Last night I received an E-mail message indicating that PCs that are preloaded with Windows 7 will start showing up on store shelves on October 22nd. As for the Release Candidate, you will be able to contine to download it until August 20th. After that time, you will still be able to install the Release Candidate, and you will still be able to acquire a product key, but you won’t be able to download the bits.

The WIndows Installer Cleanup Utility

Today I ran across a utility that I had never seen before, and I just had to tell you about it. Before I do though, let me give you a little background.

I have a Windows 2008 server that is running Hyper-V. Right now that server is hosting a bunch of lab machines that I am using to produce a training video on Exchange 2007. To make a long story short, I had a power failure last night and it caused the registry on one of my Exchange servers to become corrupted.

I was able to repair Windows and get it to boot, but there was a problem with the .NET framework that caused my Exchange services to fail to start. Because of the damage that had occurred, I couldn’t uninstall the .NET framework, but I wasn’t able to reinstall a fresh copy either because the installer was convinced that a fully functional copy was already installed.

During my quest to manually uninstall the .NET Framework, I found a Windows utility called the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility. This simple utility removes applications from the list of applications that are installed on a server. That way, if you have to remove something manually then the Windows Control Panel won’t keep showing the application even after you have removed it.

You can download this utility from: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301